Most of my parts I get from Rubber-Soul. I've got some parts occasionally from Victory50, but Rubber-Soul always seems to have a bigger selection of stuff. Generally you'll find that all of the resto shops in Japan stock the same stuff...usually when runs of repro parts etc are made, they all band together, so there isn't any difference in the bits you get from any of the shops. Victory50 does do some custom stuff tho.

Mind you, neither of them ship overseas, so your best bet would be to contact someone in Japan to act as middleman, like say Jesse Streeter: http://www.jessestreeter.com/

If you need panels or rust repair sheetmetal, I'd contact Nakazoto (he's on the forum), he lives in Japan and his employer does panels. If you need factory parts which Rubber-Soul don't list, Adam from Feast Auto in Japan seem to have some luck sourcing stuff from Nissan Japan: http://www.feastautoexport.com

If you need panels or rust repair sheetmetal, I'd contact Nakazoto (he's on the forum), he lives in Japan and his employer does panels. If you need factory parts which Rubber-Soul don't list, Adam from Feast Auto in Japan seem to have some luck sourcing stuff from Nissan Japan: http://www.feastautoexport.com

good point. I should have thought about Nakazoto earlier. I ought to check with him for my trunk floor.

or, wait, maybe I could check with you? gemini's are everywhere down there, right?

The Hako will be on display at Eastern Creek on the weekend of the 9th and 10th of March, thanks to our good friends at Motor Magazine.

Motor Magazine will have a collection of cars at the Motoring Village section of the pits, and the plan is for the Hako and an R35 to be on display together. Come and say hello

For those who don't already know, the TG Festival looks like a great weekend of petrolhead fun, more details here: http://www.topgearfestivalsydney.com.au/ So for any JNCers plannint to be in Sydney that weekend, hope to see you there!

Very true. For a very basic production motor, the L6 has got heaps of power potential. A 911 flat six would struggle to put out the same power with heaps more capacity, and the OS-G motor takes it a step further.

IIRC Auto Service Watanabe got 392hp out of a regular L-series (but I think that might have been a very extreme drag motor). So if the OS-G motor is streetable, then that's quite an amazing achievement.

I suppose...in theory...the OS-G with its 4 valve head could flow better at low rpm, compared to a L-series head with drainpipe size porting. And hence the OS-G would be more streetable than an L6 modified to make similar power.

But yeah, I don't think anyone buys the TC24 to just potter around on the shopping run

Flow aside, to hit numbers like that the cam must have lobes the size of my arm (i would say worse than the cam originally in your car).

I don't remember where (it may have been in the article) but the engineers said it was literally impossible to drive at low speed. There's a video of one called "office 240z something" on the tube with him trying to pull out of a driveway. Doesn't sound like too much fun but wide open it's a rocket.

Y'know, sometimes life overtakes you a little, and the next thing you know...you haven't driven your pride and joy for eight months!

That's the situation that I found myself faced with...after World Time Attack last September, I drove the car back into the garage, set it up on ramps, and went back into the house to have some dinner...with every intention to come back down and do some spannering after din-dins. Anyway, I never did come back down to the garage after dinner and eight months later, I'm dropping the car off the ramps again

One thing that I always seem to hear, is that modern fuels have gone all environmentally-friendly, and as a result they don't hold up well to long term storage anymore. Over time, it's meant to turn into this brown goop that gums everything up. So as a first step, I renew the pre pump fuel filter (who knows what's going to come out of the tank)...

Then I unplug the fuel line in the engine bay, and run the fuel pump for a while. And what comes out...looks clean and clear to me.

Just in case...I install a new pre-carb fuel filter.

The tank's probably got 15 litres of the old stuff in it, so I top it off with a fresh slug of BP's finest.

Then crank the engine over a few times with the ignition unplugged to get the oil circulating...and...turn the key!http://youtu.be/HfBjoZq5W1A

After a nice long drive to get everything up to temperature, dump the old oil out, which looked really black and nasty.

I have to say, that I find it easy to forget what a great car this is. My other car's an air cooled 911, and everything that ppl say about those things is true: they really are the everyday sports car, and after a while it's like that comfy pair of jeans that you end up wearing everywhere. But the Hako's character is so different. It's a lot simpler, and I suppose, more "honest" in its personality...but in its power and its sound...just wow.

Even after 6yrs of ownership I still get a shock and a buzz out of it. This never gets old.

The only casualty of the car's hibernation seems to be that one of the rubber elements of the door latch has disintegrated, and the door won't latch closed without it.

For the time being, I've stolen the one from the passenger door (I just have to remember not to open it, until I get a new one!)

Yeah, we can get Sta-Bil here too (in fact I think it's the main brand of fuel additive for long term storage). But the BP fuel that was in the Hako seemed ok after 8 months tho. I've been told by certain Porsche specialists that BP stands up the best to irregular use.

I gues sthe most elegant solution would just be to drive it more often